Speaker 1: In a futuristic Los Angeles, crime is deterred through the
Speaker 1: use of a new type of criminal justice system, one
Speaker 1: in which violent offenders are immediately put on trial for
Speaker 1: their crimes and have ninety minutes to prove their innocence
Speaker 1: to an AI judge or be immediately executed. One LAPD
Speaker 1: officer finds himself on the wrong side of this system
Speaker 1: and is now in a race against time to prove
Speaker 1: that he didn't kill his wife. It's Mercy. I'm Ronald
Speaker 1: Young Junior, and I'm leaving the theater.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: This is Ronald and I am leaving the theater after
Speaker 3: seeing Mercy. Mercy written by Marco van Bell and directed
Speaker 3: by timur Bekmambetoff, starring Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson, and
Speaker 3: for complete listing of the cast and crew, please check
Speaker 3: out the link in our show notes. It is just
Speaker 3: me today, all right. So Mercy is a film in
Speaker 3: which Chris Pratt is an LAPD detective who wakes up
Speaker 3: in a chair and is greeted by AI, an AI
Speaker 3: that is played by Rebecca Ferguson, which informs him that now,
Speaker 3: instead of subjecting criminals to a lengthy trial process, that
Speaker 3: as soon as they're arrested, they are immediately judged by
Speaker 3: an AI, which executes them if they cannot prove their
Speaker 3: innocence within ninety minutes. They open by saying you are
Speaker 3: now guilty until proven innocent, which is how Chris Pratt
Speaker 3: finds himself in this chair. He is suspected of murdering
Speaker 3: his wife, and he is informed of her murder by
Speaker 3: waking up in the chair after intense hangover. There's then
Speaker 3: interaction between him and Rebecca Ferguson as the AI as
Speaker 3: to what the rules of this are, and essentially the
Speaker 3: whole film is Chris Pratt trying to uncover in ninety
Speaker 3: minutes who killed his wife. So when I sat down
Speaker 3: and started watching this, I remember thinking, as soon as
Speaker 3: I found out that he was accused of killing his wife,
Speaker 3: I immediately thought, Oh, it's the Fugitive but worse. And
Speaker 3: then I was like, Oh, it's the Fugitive meets Minority
Speaker 3: Report but worse. And then as the movie continued, I
Speaker 3: realized that this film is more like those films Missing
Speaker 3: and Searching, which came out a few years ago, one
Speaker 3: of them starring John Choe, the other starring Storm Read
Speaker 3: and snaw Lathan. No, not Sonaw Lathan. She's the woman
Speaker 3: that I always confuse for Sonai Lathan but is not Sonahilathan.
Speaker 3: But she is in the Best Man, and she played
Speaker 3: a character named Harper, and she was going to sleep
Speaker 3: with Tay Diggs, but she did not end up sleeping.
Speaker 2: Ni Along thank you.
Speaker 3: Some of y'all were probably yelling me along at this,
Speaker 3: but NEI Along was in Searching, John Chow was in Missing,
Speaker 3: And they are films that play out on a computer screen.
Speaker 3: The entire film plays out on a computer screen. This
Speaker 3: movie is a lot like that. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 3: I would say if you watched those two movies and
Speaker 3: then you watched this, you'd be like, hey, that was
Speaker 3: pretty good, I think, especially because those movies doesn't do
Speaker 3: such a good job of building the action over the
Speaker 3: course of the entire films. They're not very long. I
Speaker 3: think they're like ninety minutes or less. This movie is
Speaker 3: only an hour and forty minutes. So again, when it
Speaker 3: starts off, I think it's the Fugitive but worse. But
Speaker 3: when I think about it along the lines of Searching
Speaker 3: and Missing, all of a sudden it's a little bit better.
Speaker 3: I was a little thrown off because the AI starts off,
Speaker 3: played by Rebecca Ferguson, is a little sas has a
Speaker 3: bit of an attitude sometimes while also playing someone who's
Speaker 3: supposed to be dispassionate an objective as a computer is
Speaker 3: wont to be. So I felt like it was a problem.
Speaker 3: But as the movie continued and it really became a
Speaker 3: true investigative who done it? I actually found myself really
Speaker 3: enjoying it. I thought, yes, the premise is stupid, Yes
Speaker 3: there are some dumb things that are happening here. Yes,
Speaker 3: this is very police state centric, all of the things
Speaker 3: that I hate. Yes, it feels a little bit like
Speaker 3: copaganda in some cases. But I really feel like when
Speaker 3: it got down to the root of it, the bottom
Speaker 3: line of it, I felt like this was a fine movie.
Speaker 2: It was perfectly fine.
Speaker 3: The biggest problems in this movie are from the expectations
Speaker 3: of the filmmakers and of the studios, and that they
Speaker 3: would expect me to put on clothes, get into my car,
Speaker 3: drive to a movie theater, sit down and watch this
Speaker 3: is absolutely ridiculous. This is by no means a theater movie.
Speaker 3: And I will also concede that I don't think missing
Speaker 3: or searching. Were theater movies either. I think those are
Speaker 3: films that wild good should be enjoyed in the comfort
Speaker 3: of your home. And this one is one that if
Speaker 3: my mom were still with us, I would have been like,
Speaker 3: I would have showed up my mom's house and been like,
Speaker 3: let's watch this and she would have been like, okay,
Speaker 3: and we would have watched it in the basement, and
Speaker 3: my mom would have watched it, enjoyed it completely, forgot
Speaker 3: about it in ninety minutes after the film over. It
Speaker 3: is something that is it is dust in the wind,
Speaker 3: you will forget about this film. However, for those of
Speaker 3: us that are going through this snowstorm right now, if
Speaker 3: the snow has indeed fallen, I'm recording this on Saturday.
Speaker 3: The snow is supposed to come overnight tonight, so you
Speaker 3: will hear this on Monday. If you hear this on
Speaker 3: Monday and you are sitting at your home in a snowstorm,
Speaker 3: this would be the perfect movie to put on. This
Speaker 3: would be the perfect movie to put on. And that's
Speaker 3: kind of the fatal flaw of this film is that
Speaker 3: most of my questioning of it are the justifications of
Speaker 3: me spending this much money to watch this in a
Speaker 3: theater when this is a.
Speaker 2: Great streaming film.
Speaker 3: And that's kind of the problem with the movie industry
Speaker 3: right now, is that it's harder and harder for them
Speaker 3: to make that distinction. If I have to go put
Speaker 3: clothes on, please justify the putting of the clothes on.
Speaker 3: There's plenty of people who don't care what's on the
Speaker 3: screen and will watch whatever you put up there, and
Speaker 3: that's fine. But in terms of y'all trying to make
Speaker 3: a genuine box office from this, we already have seen
Speaker 3: that Chris Pratt does streaming movies. He does plenty of
Speaker 3: streaming movies. Sure he did Jurassic World. This isn't that
Speaker 3: he did I believe the Tomorrow War. And there's something
Speaker 3: else that he did that was also on Amazon. I
Speaker 3: read the credits of this film. This is a film
Speaker 3: that I believe also Amazon has some hand in production
Speaker 3: or studios or attached to So we will see this
Speaker 3: on Prime in the future, and maybe that's where it
Speaker 3: should have started. Granted, things get buried on Prime, maybe
Speaker 3: they license it to Netflix or something, but this is
Speaker 3: a film that would have done well on streaming, and
Speaker 3: it do well if it was on streaming right now
Speaker 3: during this snowstorm. Instead, I had to watch it in theaters.
Speaker 3: And watching it in theaters, I remember thinking, this is nice.
Speaker 3: I'm in my tracksuit and I'm sitting in a recliner,
Speaker 3: so I feel pretty comfortable. But I would have felt
Speaker 3: more comfortable with a blanket up to my chin in
Speaker 3: a warm house that I pay rent for on my couch.
Speaker 3: That would have been better. The movie itself is it's
Speaker 3: a basic who done it? And there's a lot of
Speaker 3: things I saw coming. Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson one
Speaker 3: hundred percent clocked in. I'm surprised to see Rebecca Ferguson
Speaker 3: in something like this, lending her gravitas to a film
Speaker 3: like this, But Rebecca Ferguson also did Silo.
Speaker 2: However, That's the thing.
Speaker 3: When Rebecca says yes to a project, she says yes
Speaker 3: to a project because she thinks it's interesting and she
Speaker 3: thinks that she can make it better, she can add
Speaker 3: something to it that makes it good.
Speaker 2: I know this not because she said it in an interview.
Speaker 3: Although I'm sure you could find it somewhere, But that
Speaker 3: is how she shows up. When she showed up in Silo,
Speaker 3: she showed up serious. She showed up ready to play it.
Speaker 3: She didn't wasn't like this is some hokey project that's
Speaker 3: beneath me. She's like, I'm engaged in this streaming property
Speaker 3: and I want to continue to the story and that's
Speaker 3: important to me. So she did that. This is more
Speaker 3: of that. She showed up to play the role, and
Speaker 3: she's doing it. She's actually doing the job that she
Speaker 3: signed up to do, and I don't fault her for that.
Speaker 3: Although I will say when I see she's in a project,
Speaker 3: it is more likely that I will watch that project.
Speaker 3: And now I'm learning that her showing up doesn't mean
Speaker 3: the project will be good, but it could mean that
Speaker 3: she will be good in it, and she is good
Speaker 3: in this. Chris Pratt is fine in this. He could
Speaker 3: have been replaced by anyone, but he clocked it in
Speaker 3: at his job. I just don't think he brought anything special.
Speaker 2: To this role.
Speaker 3: In particular, there is something that happens where the premise
Speaker 3: of the film is that we're watching this countdown clock
Speaker 3: and his percentage of guilt must get below ninety two
Speaker 3: percent in order for the trial to stop, in him
Speaker 3: not to be executed. Well, at some point I'm swept
Speaker 3: away in the investigation, and when that threshold, or when
Speaker 3: the question of that threshold starts to come up, I
Speaker 3: remember my question being, how are they going to continue
Speaker 3: the movie once he drops below the threshold? Because if
Speaker 3: he does too good of a job investigating, obviously he's
Speaker 3: going to drop below the threshold. And obviously that's the
Speaker 3: direction that this film is headed. And I think for me,
Speaker 3: the answer I got when they got to that point
Speaker 3: was pretty unsatisfactory, meaning that there is still a countdown
Speaker 3: clock that exists beyond that point, and that clock felt dumb.
Speaker 3: There was a more obvious clock that felt like they
Speaker 3: could have pointed to, but for some reason, they felt
Speaker 3: like this was the clock they should continue to use,
Speaker 3: which is the clock that's attached to when the ninety
Speaker 3: minutes are up on the chair, regardless of whether.
Speaker 2: The trial is complete or not.
Speaker 3: So watching that portion of it, I felt was it
Speaker 3: made the premise seem dumber. And again, this probably isn't
Speaker 3: something that I would have thought of if I was
Speaker 3: at a theater. So yeah, with all of that being said,
Speaker 3: I think this is a three star movie straight across
Speaker 3: the middle. I think it probably rises a three point
Speaker 3: twenty five or three point five if I didn't have
Speaker 3: to leave the house to watch it. But also the
Speaker 3: premise is shaky enough that because I'm now examining those
Speaker 3: portions of it, because I'm out of the house, I
Speaker 3: don't think it could rise that far above a three
Speaker 3: star to beat anyway, you know, like, and even in
Speaker 3: its natural state, even if I had seen it at home,
Speaker 3: I would have been like, it was, all right, you
Speaker 3: should watch it. You're at home, you're not doing anything,
Speaker 3: go ahead and watch it. That's not a studying endorsement
Speaker 3: for a film. It's certainly not must see movie. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's good enough three stars. And with that, Leaving
Speaker 3: the Theater is a production of Oh It's Big Round Studios.
Speaker 3: I mixed this episode and I am currently recording this
Speaker 3: right before we head into the snowstorm, which means you
Speaker 3: will hear this episode on Monday, and I will also
Speaker 3: edit next week's episode tomorrow as well, Tomorrow being Sunday,
Speaker 3: because I'm going to be stuck in the house, so
Speaker 3: it makes sense to just get ahead on two episodes
Speaker 3: of Leaving the Theater rather than possibly being in a
Speaker 3: hole in the weeks to come. There's a lot that
Speaker 3: I'm working on right now. I'm working on Heartbreaker, the
Speaker 3: live show. I have to do a lot of marketing
Speaker 3: to sell tickets as well as do the content for
Speaker 3: the show itself, as well as coordinate all the logistics
Speaker 3: around the show. I am obviously working on Leaving the
Speaker 3: Theater as you're hearing it right now, and I'm also
Speaker 3: working on Wait for It. And I am late on
Speaker 3: two episodes that should have come out two weeks ago
Speaker 3: and this week, and that is the workload that I
Speaker 3: have right now. I am working very hard at OW
Speaker 3: It's Big Ron Studios. It's important that this year twenty
Speaker 3: twenty six, that I work very very hard in order
Speaker 3: to accomplish all of the personal career goals as well
Speaker 3: as the content goals that I have for Oh It's
Speaker 3: Big Ron and Oh It's Big Ron Studios. You can help.
Speaker 3: You can help by becoming a patron on Patreon if
Speaker 3: you're not already there. There are plenty of extras that
Speaker 3: come with it. You get the ad free Leaving the
Speaker 3: Theater feed, you get on the Couch, which in which
Speaker 3: we're doing when Harry met Sally. That's another thing that
Speaker 3: I'll be recording and doing this coming week. Get I
Speaker 3: Don't Like That, which will drop this coming week you
Speaker 3: get Wait for It extras. We just did a conversation
Speaker 3: me and Lindy West about why we're still talking about
Speaker 3: Oprah's body.
Speaker 2: I am working very, very hard.
Speaker 3: And that's important because we are delivering all of these
Speaker 3: things to you via the Patreon, and the money you
Speaker 3: give us on the Patreon allows me to continue to
Speaker 3: make this project, Heartbreaker, Wait for and future. Oh It's
Speaker 3: Big Ron Studios projects. It's a labor of love, but
Speaker 3: it is labor and if that means something to you,
Speaker 3: go to patreon dot com slash oh It's Big Ron,
Speaker 3: or click on the link in our show notes. Show
Speaker 3: art from Heather Wilder. Theme music by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.
Speaker 3: For more information about Mercy, check out our show notes.
Speaker 3: You can follow me on Instagram, blue Sky, TikTok, threads,
Speaker 3: or letterboxed at owits Big Ron. That's at O h
Speaker 3: I T S b I g R O N. You
Speaker 3: can find out more about this show and other ODS
Speaker 3: Big Ron Studio shows by following us on Instagram at
Speaker 3: oates Big Ron Studios.
Speaker 2: Leaving the theater will be back soon.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, I'm Ronald young junior, and I'm a
Speaker 1: little sassy.
Speaker 2: Has been of an attitude sometimes